Make good time in the checkout line

Your customers impatiently hopping from one foot to the other in your checkout line – another reason why retailers have to go mobile now.

Time is money, a phrase used by Benjamin Franklin – this is particularly true and valid for waiting customers in your local store. You cannot control what happens in the till queue while a customer is waiting - when is the till queue too long? What will the customer do - leave your store and visit the next but one – perhaps visiting your competitor perhaps.

Picture from the video - The Future of Payments -- A Story from PayPal - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4CKhCOQ7c0

I still hear a few people shouting: ‘It’s still very early days for mobile payments!’ YES and NO - the generation Y is convinced that it is a lot easier to pay for things using their phones instead of pulling out a payment card or even cash. And so do I and I am a very early one of the generation X.

Several years ago we have been promised the ability to make payments anywhere by simply waving our devices at the checkout or between among each other. In Japan mobile wallets ( Osaifu-Keitai ) became mainstream. Also when we look at for example Nice in France where contactless mobile payments have been successfully trialed on a city-wide basis with a few thousand resident since about 5 years. So why are we still waiting for widespread availability of such services?

Consumers expect things to be quick and this also applies to their in store shopping experience. As consumers expect speed and convenience, it comes to no surprise that they don’t enjoy waiting in lines.

Retailers can offer mobile POS for line busting and therefore reduce waiting time.
A mobile platform including comprehensive POS functionality and real-time capabilities can enable retailers to process transactions from anywhere in the store.
Empower each of your sales associates with a mobile application in order s/he can serve your customers better and charge them directly at the POI – or better point of consulting.

Show your customers that you value their time by cutting those waiting lines!

We are always talking about store experience online, offline and mobile, providing better customer service, customer centered retail – to do this we have to empower the local sales associate to do his or her job best.
The sale associate’s education and knowledge about the individual customer his needs and expectation is so important in increasing store traffic, conversion, average transaction and so on. Qualify the sales people with the right set of mobile devices and apps so that they can provide outstanding customer service.

PayPal updated iOS and Android Apps with the ability to order ahead, pay restaurant bills, access bill me later and more …

These features were announced last year and will be rolled out across Europe in the near future. At the same time, it appears that PayPal is rolling out the same features in Australia.

But as I said it’s not only megalomaniac fantasies – ever tried things like …

Apple Pay

Google Wallet …

Isis Mobile Wallet …

Walmart's Scan & Go

One feature of Walmart's Scan & Go is that the users has the opportunity to scan merchandise in certain stores (as far as I know currently about 200 stores) and pay at a self-checkout counter.
The latest update to the app features the new digital coupon capabilities as well as the ability to scan a QR code on a printed receipt to receive an electronic version.

Or even apps by McDonald’s …

On the other hand it's important to keep in mind that investing in solo solutions for mobility requirements leads to a complex, costly and fragmented landscape. It's a must to reduce complexity and for that reason a the best way is to choose a platformn and solution which provide the industry's most comprehensive mobile portfolio including a backbone to build, manage and secure apps powered by big data and delivered in the Cloud.

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